Susan Solo – Photographer | Traveler | Adventurer

Blog

  • 3rd Annual Movie Day

    This is the third year in a row that Chris and I have pledged to watch all of the Oscar Best Picture nominees before the awards show so that we can make an informed decision on which movie should actually win. You know, in case the academy asks for our humble opinions. In most cases, the nominations are movies that we wouldn’t necessarily choose to watch, so this tradition is sort of a way to stretch our cinematic palette, if you will. The tradition of “movie day” was born when we found a movie theatre that was screening all five of the Best Picture nominees in one day and we decided to buy an advance pass. When we arrived that day, it was totally packed and all of the good seats were taken so we just decided to wait and watch the movies when they were out on DVD. And we’ve done that three years in a row now. The academy expanded the Best Picture category to ten movies instead of five this year, which means we definitely have our work cut out for us. So a few weeks ago, we set aside an entire Saturday to watch several of the films: The Hurt Locker, District 9, Inglorious Basterds, and A Serious Man. We gathered up some of our favorite movie candies and popcorn, and we spent the day screening the noms from the comfort of our living room.

    And with that, I’m hereby crossing #77 off of my 101 in 1001 list: Spend a whole day seeing movies (about 4 films) at a theatre. Now, I know it says “at a theatre,” but I have officially decided that I love watching movies at home 1000 times better than at the movie theatre. Don’t get me wrong, we have a Fox Cinemas close to us that is brand-new, huge, clean and offers very comfy seats in their stadium theatres. But (crankypants warning!) every single time I have been to the movies in the past couple of years, I always end up sitting next to someone who talks through the entire film, and it just ruins my experience. At home, it’s so nice and quiet and if Chris and I want to comment, we can always push pause (which of course also works for bathroom breaks!). 🙂

    We have a few more movies to watch before we can declare our official picks, but in the meantime tell us what movies you’ve seen! Do you have a prediction for any of the Oscar award categories?

  • Obsessed

    I think I have become a little obsessed with winter-weather photos these past few weeks. In all fairness, this has been a very unusual winter for us, and I’m just kind of fascinated by the weather in general. One last shot (for now) of the residual ice from the big blizzard. This was taken yesterday in the morning – I guess maybe this little holly busy was under a bunch of the icicles that were dripping, and the water re-froze overnight:

    Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way! Hopefully your Valentine is keeping you warm and cozy today. 🙂

  • Blizzard Aftermath

    Hopefully you’re not tired of seeing snow pictures yet! Here are a few from the days after the snowstorm finally stopped and we were left with well over two feet of snow. I’m not sure what the official total was, but I think we were near 30 inches!








  • Snow(pocalypse) Details

    I’m not going to spend a ton of time writing about the big East Coast blizzard of 2010 because the media has it really well covered (and yes, they’re actually calling it a “snowpocalypse”). Instead, I’ll just show you a few snowy details around my own house. I haven’t ventured out any further than my doorway because it’s still snowing. Once it stops, we’ll go dig ourselves out.

    Last night around 8:30pm it looked like this:


    And then this morning at 8:30am it looked like this:

    As of right now at 2:30pm, we have around 23 inches of snow, and it’s still coming down.




    We have been lucky enough to have power all night and day so far, but we don’t have satellite TV. Hm…I wonder why:

    Stay warm and safe everyone!

  • The Banana Bread Incident

    (Doesn’t that sound like a good book title?) As you may know, I’m not super savvy in the kitchen and that’s an understatement. I’m getting a little better at some things as I practice new recipes and take classes, but I’m still cullinarily clueless in general, and every once in a while more often than not I have some sort of mishap in the kitchen such as the banana bread incident this past Sunday.

    Bread recipes almost always trip me up, so for practice I wanted to try my hand at baking something simple like a banana bread from scratch. I won’t drag this post out into all of the details from mise en place to the point where I had a mini melt-down and threw the entire loaf of bread away. Instead I’ll fast-forward towards the end of the baking process when I went to check on my delicious dough. The cook time was indicated in the recipe as 55-60 minutes, so at 50 minutes I checked on the loaf and found it to be beautiful on the outside, but needing just a few more minutes on the inside per the toothpick test. And because it did look so pretty, I grabbed my camera for a really quick shot, intending to take more photos after it was done and sliced. So I do have a “before” photo for you.

    Unfortunately, when I went to put the bread back into the oven for the final 10 minutes, the pan slipped right out of my mitts and ended upside-down on the rack in the oven. And the middle was just hot and soft enough that it slipped out (in slow motion, of course) and through the rack onto the bottom of the oven before I could get the pan right-side-up. Cue mini melt-down, which is also the reason I don’t have an “after” picture for you. Usually I have a better sense of humor about these things, but for some reason I was so frustrated about this one! I guess all the work that goes into making bread made me feel like I wasted a big part of my day. Plus it smelled so heavenly and I was looking forward to it!

    In any case, I’m telling you this story because 1.) hopefully you’ll get a laugh out of it and 2.) because while of course it’s so great to cheer someone on for the things they’re good at, isn’t it also sometimes just a teeeeeeeeeeny tiny bit interesting (or satisfying?) to hear about what someone *isn’t* good at doing? I think it’s totally okay if you agree!